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The question that loomed over Virginia’s much-watched legislative elections was whether Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s sunny brand of conservatism could replace Donald Trump’s sneering version and flip the state to full Republican control for the first time in a decade.
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Instead, voters rejected Youngkin’s “common sense” positions, particularly on abortion and other hot-button cultural issues. They were not impressed with his proposal to set what he called a “limit,” rather than a “ban,” on abortion after 15 weeks, with exceptions.
Virginia Democrats projected to sweep General Assembly, dealing blow to GOP
“I want it to be a mixed government [in Richmond] so it doesn’t go too far to the right,” Navin Alexander, 54, who owns an IT company, said Tuesday afternoon after voting at Broad Run High School in Loudoun County. “I don’t like the 15-week ban.”
Democrats scored victories in Tuesday’s election. Ohio voters enshrined abortion rights in their constitution, democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear won reelection in his deeply red state, and Virginia’s Republican governor failed to win majorities in the General Assembly. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: AP/The Washington Post)
Gabriella Rivera, 29, an engineer, said: “I mostly came for the issue of reproductive rights. I’m with a woman’s right to choose.”
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Such sentiments meant it was the Democrats, not the GOP, who won control of both legislative chambers, albeit narrowly. The results dashed Youngkin’s dream of hanging his red fleece vest on a White House bedpost after next year’s presidential election.
Virginia, politically speaking, will not join the MAGA South by enacting an all-out conservative agenda. The Republicans hoped not only to curb abortions but also to cut tax rates, weaken environmental protections and make it more difficult to vote.
Instead, Richmond will continue to have divided government, but now under a weakened, lame-duck governor. Compromise is still possible on less controversial issues such as economic development, school funding and mental health. But there will be no major movement on ideologically divisive questions as attention shifts to next year’s presidential and congressional elections, and to the 2025 gubernatorial race.
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The results in Virginia and elsewhere in the country Tuesday may help calm Democrats’ anxiety about President Biden’s poor approval ratings. He’s considerably less popular in Virginia than Youngkin, according to polls. But that didn’t drag down the Democrats on Election Day, when it mattered.
Virginia election results
Most important, Tuesday’s vote ends speculation that the Republicans’ robust 2021 sweep of all three top state offices — governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general — signaled the start of a slide to the right in Virginia.
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Instead, it now seems that Youngkin’s triumph two years ago resulted partly from a lackluster campaign by his Democratic opponent, Terry McAuliffe, and partly from Virginia’s historical tendency to vote against whatever party won the White House in the preceding year. The state may be purple politically, but blue is the dominant hue as Democrats hold both U.S. Senate seats and have a 6-to-5 edge in the U.S. House delegation.
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Youngkin’s affable persona and conciliatory rhetoric were central to Republican hopes in the Old Dominion. Trump’s angry, divisive style has never appealed to Virginians, who rejected him in both presidential ballots in 2016 and 2020.
But Youngkin’s attempts to frame his policies as centrist did not prevent him from stoking fires in the base by taking conservative positions on controversial cultural issues. In addition to trying to restrict abortion, he directed schools to weaken protections for transgender students. He also took a rightward tack on the environment by securing Virginia’s withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a multistate effort to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
There were signs that Youngkin was aware at the end of the campaign that his position on abortion, in particular, risked hurting his cause. In his final public comments to voters, he did not mention his 15-week plan, compared with current state law permitting abortion until 26 weeks.
Post-Schar School poll: Abortion is key for Dems., women in Virginia election
Instead, Youngkin talked about safer issues such as taxes, education and public safety, and said “the Biden economy” was the biggest issue in the election.
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That may have helped with some swing voters, but Democratic voters were happy with the party’s performance at the national level.
Democrats’ “plans so far have been good to stimulate job growth,” said Mark Hindle, 61, who works in consulting. “I don’t think either party could do much about inflation.”
Another voter’s comments may have summed up Youngkin’s biggest problem.
Travis Smith, 44, a pharmaceutical researcher, said he was “a lifelong Republican” until Trump’s nomination in 2016. A U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Smith admired the late Republican senator and former naval officer John McCain. Tuesday, however, he voted Democratic.
“I just saw the [Republican] party going in a direction I didn’t like,” Smith said, adding, “I have two daughters, so women’s rights are really important to me.”
For all his efforts to blur the picture, Youngkin simply may have been unable to separate himself entirely from the MAGA taint.
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